Page 24 of Descent

“All because you gave them up. You shared their location.”

“NO!” The scream tears through my throat, agony lancing through my entire body. I barely know the people she’s speaking of, can’t bring a single memory of them to mind. But my soul cries out for them.

My skull feels like it’s gonna split wide open.

“Stop, stop it!” I shout, wishing I could clutch my head to stop the spinning room, the noise roaring through me.

“I can stop all of the pain. Just ask.”

I’m coming apart at the seams. Memories swell and push at the bleak walls of my inner self, crushing, the pressure bone shattering.

“P-please …”

Ananke utters another word I cannot hear.

And the pain abruptly stops. Agony sweeps back like the tide, pulling any clarity of what just happened with it. The sensation feels familiar, like waking from a dream, remembering less and less of it within seconds of waking. I grasp for the memories, the images, but they wisp into smoke through my fingers.

“Serve me and Pantheon for a time. You will earn the right to your memories, or the choice of never having to remember them again. Give me a year, and I will give you everything, Ero.”

“No one can help,” I sob, only just realizing that I’m on the ground, curled around my knees, shivering. “Everything is gone.”

What little I can bring to mind surfaces, the past few months of drinking, fighting, running. Pain. So much pain and loneliness. All of it making me weak. Wearing me down.

And Ananke somehow grasps the core of that weakness.

“Ah, but at your lowest, I can rebuild you, my suffering knight,” Ananke hums, crouching to rest a hand on my shoulder.

Something in me stirs at that thought, at all of the cruel treatment she’s put me through so far. A caged animal raises its head within me in protest, like the last vestiges of my pride and anger working their way up and out through my quivering lips. “I s-said…fuck you.”

“Hm. Bold. And stupid.”

Before I can move, I feel the chill of a knife at my throat. She’s going to kill me.

And for the first time since I can remember…

I don’t want to die.

6

CIRCE

Rust-colored water fills the sink.

A few cuts on my arm reopened, nothing serious. My knuckles are split on one hand, don’t remember exactly when that happened.

Staring at the mirror, I rinse my hands, push them back through my hair before tugging off my shirt, dropping my pants. Bruises mark my ribs faintly, marks from a rough pull of tough fingers.

His fingers.

Pressed into my skin, pulling me away from danger.

I need to pay more attention. Stupid mistake. Stupid hot that he did it so flawlessly.

The way we moved out there…

The way he tossed me around like nothing. He’s unbelievably strong, skilled, even better than me. Makes me fucking irate that he’s so damn good at this job.

No. It’s not a job.

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